


This Is The Way We End (Or Begin Again)

by bushlaboo



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6339436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bushlaboo/pseuds/bushlaboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver angst-fest post-4.16 (Broken Hearts). [Basically Arrow emotionally compromised me and I will make you feel it.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is The Way We End (Or Begin Again)

**Author's Note:**

> Not a middle of the night thought, but still one that would not leave me alone, so I wrote it up on and posted it from my phone. Please excuse the melodrama and mistakes.

It all started with a red pen, the first bit of color he allowed himself to acknowledge after years spent shrouded in darkness, and ended with a click of heels. Their journey had been long and circuitous, but so brief at the same time - a shooting star flying through the night sky, so achingly beautiful that you could not tear your eyes from it. It made him believe that he could make a wish upon it, that they would last - not just survive in this life they'd chosen, but _thrive_ \- and it would come true.

And it _had_. For a glorious moment, kneeling before her in front of their family and friends, asking Felicity to spend the rest of their lives together - not just as partners, but husband and wife, joined in every aspect - it had been true.

At least it had seemed that way. Felt it. But it had been a fragile veneer ready to crumble. They had been tested and come out stronger, but not where it mattered most. Oliver could see that now.

It was echoing sound of Felicity's heels reverberating through the base they had setup together that finally struck home the fact that he wasn't the only one who had failed. Fear had tripped them both up.

He had reverted back to the man he'd become on the island, resolved to face things alone, and unable to lean on others because the consequences had always been dire when he had done so. He lied, believing it was the only way to have the two things he wanted most in his entire life: Felicity and his son.

That choice, the one he sensed to be wrong from the moment he made it, ended up costing him both. And it fed into Felicity's fear ... he had scaled walls he never realized she had erected, ones she had alluded to in Nanda Parbat and he had only briefly glimpsed during their fight after learning that Ray was alive; ones she built after her father left and, as she put it, Cooper "faked died."

Her bravery had always been different than his, not an overt show of starring down criminals - though that would come later, much to his distress - it had manifest itself in the way she didn't buy his ridiculous lies but helped him anyhow, the way she stood up to him after she knew what he was capable of and challenged him to do good for their city, and had accumulated to the moment where she stood before him scared, but determined and told him: "If you're not leaving, I'm not leaving."

Oliver had thought her beautiful before, anyone with eyes who'd seen her in that gold dress at the charity auction or dolled up for counting cards in a mob casino, would attest to Felicity's physical beauty. It had been that moment when all the gorgeous individual pieces that made up Felicity Smoak came together and he truly saw her for the first time, an irresistible force of nature that had changed his life. _That had changed him_.

Inside that woman was little girl who doubted that those she loved would stay, would choose her. Perhaps she thought she had faced that demon and come out the other side ... or maybe it had just scabbed over and she thought it healed until it got pulled off too soon and bled again.

Oliver could easily blame that on himself. He'd shown hints of deeper affection and then slept with Isabel, had told her he could not be in a relationship with someone he cared about and almost immediately started one with Sara, he told her he loved her - had meant it - but hid from that truth before ending them without ever really allowing them to start. He kept making choices that put distance or danger or people between them, and when finally they had their moment, that amazing night wrapped up in each other all too briefly, he had let her walk away.

That they got a second chance was a miracle, but that fear had been bubbling underneath the surface for Felicity. He'd tasted before, in the alley after his return and again in their own home when she talked about losing herself in him.

It had not occurred to Oliver before this moment with words of love spoken but things still very much broken between them that Felicity didn't really know how to find herself in them, and not because she didn't want to, but because she was afraid to ... if she did and he left where would that leave her?

Not that he would. Not intentionally, not if he could help it.

She used to be able to push that that fear down. Blind herself to it through shear force of will, but his actions had allowed doubts to creep in. She loved him, knew that he loved her, but could no longer will herself to believe that it was enough. The lessons she had learned through her father's abandonment and Cooper's choices had shaped her and as much as she wanted love to be enough, it wasn't. She did not trust that it could see them through.

He knew the heartfelt words they had spoken earlier, truthful as they were, were not going to be magic fix. He had given her words and promises before and had not lived up to them. Oliver knew what she needed now was action. To prove them, to show them not to be hollow.

He could spill every last detail of his life, remove the gloss he confided to her over their idyllic summer and never make a bigger decision than what kind of take-out to pick up without her input and it wouldn't mean a thing ... not really. Not until Felicity faced her own insecurities.

Meaning the only way Oliver could fight for her, for _them_ , at the moment was not to drown in his own. He had to face them and find a way to overcome them so that he could make his vow to her true.

That way when she ready, because he couldn't not believe that day would come. They were meant to be each others always, nothing could shake that certainty. When she made herself whole, he'd be as well - he would become a man who wouldn't lie to her or leave her out of the important decisions.

Then they would truly be able to find themselves in each other. Their always could begin. And his ring would go back on her finger and be joined by a band that would unite them for the rest of their lives.


End file.
